One month after the elections, at ENIL we would like to make a few observations about the results.
First of all, we congratulate our Board member Stelios Kympouropoulos (Greece) for his election to the European Parliament, and look forward to working with him in the next 5 years. Stelios will be leaving the Board following his appointment as an MEP, but we trust that he will be a strong ally when it comes to Independent Living.
The elections results showed trends in different directions. About 73 MEPs formed the new far right group Identity and Democracy (ID) which has as its main focus to “protect sovereignty” in Europe. On the other side of the spectrum, we see that the ALDE group has plans to merge into Renew Europe, a new group with, for example Macron’s La République en Marche. Also, the Green group gained 25 seats compared to last elections. Next week, on 2 July, the new European Parliament will take office. The day before, on 1 July, all political groups will need to announce their membership.
During their inaugural meeting, new MEPs should elect the President and 14 Vice Presidents of the European Parliament. The new Parliamentary Committees will also be established.
ENIL plans to work together with all members of the new European Parliament that want to advance Human Rights and Equality for all people in the EU and wider, regardless of their race, disability, gender, age, religion or any other characteristic. At the moment, we are establishing contacts with the new MEPs.
You can help us identify MEPs we should be working with by sharing your opinion about the elected MEPs in your country. If you want to share any information about the elections results and elected MEPs in your region, please contact frank.sioen@enil.eu. You do not need to provide a full political analysis, just your opinion on the MEP in question. For example, it would help if you could point to MEPs with a track record on disability issues or human rights in general, or those that you worked with in the past in your countries. Equally, we would like to know which MEPs have a poor human rights record.
Together with the European Disability Forum, we are also asking MEPs to support the re-establishment of the Disability Intergroup in the Parliament. There is a limited number of intergroups in each parliamentary term (click this link for the list of the previous term) and even though the Disability Intergroup has existed for 40 years, there will be strong competition from other interest groups. Therefore, it is essential that we ensure sufficient support from MEPs before the negotiations in September and October. If you wish to support this effort, please write to your MEP and ask them to vote for the re-establishment of the Disability Intergroup.
